It's a
good rule of thumb that if a show wasn't one of the 18 that CBS renewed
in mid-March, the odds of another season were bad. On Saturday morning
CBS cancelled five of its freshman shows while renewing the long-running
procedural The Mentalist.

Getting cancelled are new comedies The Crazy Ones, Friends with Better Lives and Bad Teacher, as well as the dramas Hostages and Intelligence. While none of these is a surprise, the most upsetting is probably The Crazy Ones starring Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar. That show had potential, but being a single-camera comedy, it stuck out like a sore thumb on the traditionally multi-camera, laugh track-filled CBS.

The sole piece of good news was for The Mentalist, which was renewed for a seventh season. The Simon Baker drama has remained on the bubble for the past few seasons, but always manages to sneak in.

These cancellations give CBS its worst freshman TV season in six years, with only two out of its eight new shows being renewed for a second season. Hostages and Intelligence were the only new dramas on CBS' schedule this season, making it the first time in six years that the network did not renew any of its new drama projects.

Ironically, despite its bad showing, this was actually a great year for new CBS comedies. Two of them were renewed (Mom and The Millers), and this is the first time in eight years that CBS has renewed two freshman comedies in the same season.